Located a few steps from the port of Marseille, the Mucem celebrates its tenth anniversary today. The Museum of European and Mediterranean Civilizations was imagined by Rudy Ricciotti in 2002 when the city “invested weakly in the project”. The architect now believes that the place is poorly managed. He accuses at length, in an interview granted to La Marseille, the teams of Pierre-Olivier Costa, the director of the establishment, of making it “a black box without light” for exhibitions “worthy of a provincial museum” and “which hasten [its] underdevelopment”.
At the time of its construction, the Mucem was a “social epic”, underlines Rudy Ricciotti, thinking back to the hundreds of workers who brought this project to life, at a time when few people believed in the project. Today, he believes that the building is “mistreated”: “The wooden moat, below, where I dreamed that we could go to read a book in the cool. Except that they closed the staircase that goes up to the esplanade, but forgot to make a major space for fire safety. A situation which he opened up to the director of the establishment: “They have nothing to give a fuck”, he assures. “I said to Costa: ‘Do you know that if there is a fire, you end up in the hole?'”
Attendance at the Marseille museum – whose terrace is accessible – is now around 1.2 million visitors. Only a quarter of Marseillais are among the visitors to the place. For the architect, this situation is explained by the editorial choices of the team at the head of the establishment. The Marseillais “do not feel represented by the cultural programming”, he laments. “For them, it’s an international type of urban folklore.”
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“The dream of a culture today is to redo a black box in which there is no light. But who cares if it’s to see exhibitions by American artists like Jeff Koons. These are exhibitions that hasten the underdevelopment of the Mucem, the submission to imperialism and to Anglo-Saxon neurotic mythologies. It is behavior worthy of a provincial museum to exhibit artists already seen in European capitals, the architect gets carried away. I find that completely dodgy. To believe that there are no deserving French artists, even Marseillais. We feel that there is this existential difficulty in the management of the museum to be in its real time. It’s always the same sardinade: hip-hop, folk stuff.”
Only consolation for the architect, the reception of the building by the Marseillais. “The Mucem has touched the hearts of the people”, he believes, before comparing his work to “Quasimodo’s tears”. “[The Mucem] recalled that Marseille had tenderness,” he finally concludes.